Morrisons scraps ‘use by’ date on milk in favour of sniff test

39 comments
  1. I already ignore these dates. If it smells ok, looks ok and tastes ok I’ll eat it.

  2. As an anosmic who hates food waste, I’m conflicted by this, the sniff test has to be replaced by a taste test, milk being “in date” is a useful guide to know if I’m about to get a mouthful of sour milk or not

  3. Some people have Zero sense of smell due to medical conditions so will be completely unable to determine if it’s safe or not.

    I have a sense of smell but won’t be buying any milk without a use by date

  4. I’m slightly surprised this isn’t illegal, to be honest. I know they’ll still have a best before date, but I thought some things had to have a Use By date.

  5. >The retailer will instead place ‘best before’ on 90% of its own-brand milk and encourage customers to use a sniff test to check quality

    Legit the first line

  6. > The retailer will instead place ‘best before’ on 90% of its own-brand milk and encourage customers to use a sniff test to check quality.

    Won’t this just mean that pretty much everyone starts using the “best before” date as a “use by” date?

  7. That is not a bad idea. I have noticed that the date is really just an indication. Sometimes the milk is off the next day, sometime it last a few days longer.

    The problem is that modern milk can go wrong in different ways. It can go sour, which is easy to detect, but I have also had milk that was not sour and still off (kind of mouldy rather than sour). And that is really hard to determine with certainty.

  8. Going to be annoying when you get home and then find it’s no good or you will start getting people open it in store to sniff then put back on shelf

  9. Plant milk has a much longer shelf life. I go for that instead. It’s also better for the environment (water, land, emissions, etc.).

  10. This from the Food Standards Agency website:

    *Depending on the product, you will see one of the two dates on most packaged foods:*

    *a use-by date – relating to food safety*

    *a best before date – relating to food quality*
    ****
    And there’s more!
    ****

    *Don’t trust the sniff test*

    *Food can look and smell fine even after its use-by date, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat. It could still be contaminated.*

    *You cannot see, smell or taste the bacteria that cause food poisoning.*

  11. Misleading headline, they are keeping exactly the date on the milk, just calling it a best before date rather than a use by date.

    If the BBC were using an outrage heading to get more clicks, it doesn’t seem to have worked based on the number of people here who haven’t read the article at all.

  12. I’m confused with the conspiracy hate towards this move. Surely this will make sales worse because people would drink the milk they have left longer (a couple days passed the date), rather than going out and buying another?

  13. What if you have a shit sense of smell? (such as with me…)

    But reading beyond the headline, I always prefer best before than a strict use by.

  14. All my milk has “best before” dates **PLUS** “best consumed within four days after opening”. It’s not rocket science!

  15. People’s sense of smell declines as the age. Also their immune systems. Do they give a shit about the millions of elderly people out there?

  16. Morrisons to encourage sniffing milk as disease which impairs sense of smell sweeps nation.

  17. >The dates on the milk will stay the same

    Then the issue will stay the same, this won’t change anyone’s behaviour at all.

  18. They may be the first supermarket to do it, but they aren’t the first brand to do it. Yeo Valley already put a Best Before date on their milk.

  19. Unbelievable that a common sense change like this is getting this kind of reaction. A sad indication that many Brits can no longer function without the nanny state doing ALL their thinking for them

  20. Daft. It still has a date on it. Does anyone actually give a shit what sort of date it has on it? See the date, judge the milk.

  21. I had a traumatic childhood experience where I used milk which was well in date, took one almighty glug of milk and ended up spewing chunks of congealed lumps everywhere. As a result, I do the smell test every time I open the milk and it hasn’t let me down since. I think most people would be surprised how long beyond the best before date that milk can last (apart from the one that got me good).

  22. Supermarket milk seems to last about two weeks anyway, sometimes longer

    At one point we got milkman deliveries but it was all from a local dairy (same stuff our corner shop sells) and for some reason their stuff seems to last all of 2 days

  23. like fuck will i be buying milk from somewhere that has had any body’s nose neer the lid.

    this is going to cause so much wasted milk and wasted farmers time…

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